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Like him or not, what Barack Obama did yesterday, in my opinion at least, epitomizes what we need our next president to be, namely a teacher. Agree with him or not, can there be any doubt that anyone listening to that speech yesterday is not thinking harder and more expansively about race in this country and in our lives today? Trust him or not, is there any question that he articulated a real truth about the state of race relations from both a black and a white perspective?

Right now, we are having a “teachable moment” about race in America. If you listen to conservative talk radio as I have been for the past few weeks, the issue is, no pun intended, black or white. If the candidate does not distance himself from his pastor and his church, then he is guilty by association of believing the invective that’s being dragged in front of us by the media or which we are choosing to consume on YouTube. If he does distance himself, then it’s simply politics as usual. It’s a simple equation.

But the reality is that this conversation, like most, is more nuanced. And it’s our collective lack of understanding of that nuance which bogs us down. We have little empathy for the experiences of those unlike us, and too many of us are afraid to ask. We need an education in this country about race. We need a starting point for the conversation, and we need someone to take on a teacherly role to guide it.

Seventy-five years ago, FDR gave the first of his “Fireside Chats” intended to educate (as well as sway) the American public about the issues of the day. By every measure, they were hugely successful in moving people to act in informed and collective ways. And the feedback that Roosevelt received in the form of millions of letters allowed him to tap into the pulse of the people and the nation in ways that few other presidents before or since have been able to. He guided, he taught my father’s generation about the realities of the world, enabling them to have more informed conversations about the state of their lives. Yes, I know, these were not balanced presentations, but at minimum they made the country think about the proposed solutions to the complexities of the time.

And while the world by its very nature is complex, this moment seems decidedly so. Not just because of race, but because of the litany of problems that Obama articulated and the fact that no one no matter what color or heritage is immune from them. (I don’t think climate change cares much about the color of your skin or your family heritage.) We need someone who will encourage and facilitate a broad ranging conversation about these issues. We need someone who can create some lesson plans for the millions of us who want to engage, want to contribute, want to work to solve the problems together. We need someone who I can hold up as a role model for my own children as a steward for the environment, as a peace maker, as a listener, as a deep thinker.

We need a teacher.

This is just one of many teachable moments that this world and this society will continue to throw at us. Rare has been the occasion when we as a country have been led to a deeper understanding of events. In what was without question the most teachable moment of my life six-and-a-half years ago, I was told to go to the mall and keep spending my money. That’s not what a teacher would have done.

28 Comments

You are so right – we need a teacher. We need a leader to take risks and say what needs to be said. And Obama says it so eloquently. I was lucky to grow up outside of Washington DC and be witness to Kennedy’s speeches firsthand. I was young and vulnerable and didn’t realize how important many of the speeches I heard were. Growing up in the 60s and having so much happen around me, I didn’t realize that Martin Luther King’s ‘I have a Dream’ speech was historic until much later.

This is one of those speeches that everyone needs to hear. Listen through it without making judgments. I live in an urban city, Oakland, where schools are crumbling, the dropout rate is growing, crime is on the rise. The level of despair in many black households is so overwhelming and now middle class white families are feeling it. We need hope again. We need to work together and understand that we are not alone in this. We need to help keep schools open, keep our teachers, help them.

Yesterday, teachers in Alameda, CA stood in trash cans to represent throwing away our public education. Is this what teachers have to do to make a point? Only way out of this is finding solutions and working together. I wrote a post last week about this Education Candidate?

I think the speech is also evidence of critical thinking and deep exploration of ideas. However, what gets me about the speech is that the media is playing only tiny clips. YOu can’t have critical thinking or reflection from that!

Ive certainly passed it around. Wouldn’t it be great to have a teacher that we’d like to learn from, not one that we’d like to have a beer with?

C’mon Gary. That’s a little disingenuous even for you. And are you saying that a kid can’t display evidence of critical thinking and deep exploration of ideas in the writing of an essay by committee? I see examples of that every day on Wikipedia, maybe not by kids, but by groups of people who are willing to expend some intellectual sweat on some difficult writing topics, who negotiate those words in some pretty amazing ways. Is it a bad thing to be thinking about how we get our kids to aspire to that? Not at the expense of “traditional” essay writing but as another way of doing it in a highly collaborative world?

These guys are politicians, not teachers and they are making the same moves I have seen all politicians make my whole life. At best it is a game of one-upmanship, and Barack is winning. Great speeches are written by thoughtful people often natural teachers, like Lincoln, who wrote some of his own speeches.

The thing is that major corporations and the media elects the president, or now the media/major corporations/internet-media elect presidents. In many ways it is a horse show, not a horse race, the whole process is about “appearing a certain way to gain favor, it is never about who the men are, or how intelligent or capable they are. Bill Clinton, who like President Nixon was one of our most thoughtful and intelligent presidents, but that is not why he got elected. He got elected because he can handle a crowd, like he is Jack Nicholson at the oscars, not because as Alan Greenspan pointed out in his auto biographyhe had more thorough knowledge of economics than anyone he knew in the field. That did not get him or keep him president, He was cool , as in Marhall Mcluhan cool who said some thing like with TV (or youtube) it is not so much the message as the sender that is
“sent.” and recieved. And yes Obama I think is “Marshall Mcluhan” cool,
like Kennedy, Clinton and Nicholson. He also reads other peoples carefullly crafted words, rather well. I am not sure about much else .

I agree with you, but none of this matters unless we actually know people of other races, spend time with them, share culture.

How many Americans have broken bread with a person of a different culture?

A recent poll, being touted widely by conservatives, surveyed kids and asked them to name “famous Americans.” The top 3 were Rev. Martin Luther King Jr., Rosa Parks and Harriet Tubman and six of the top 10 (including Marilyn Monroe) were women.

Conservatives say that this is the result of political correctness. There aren’t enough dead white guys on the list.

The problem is that kids (and far too many adults) don’t know anything about King, Parks or Tubman that isn’t a 3-second cartoonish factoid about their heroism. King thought of his 1963 Lincoln Memorial speech as the “Broken Promise” speech, not about a dream. He gave lots of speeches, but you wouldn’t learn that in school. Rosa Parks trained for civil disobedience, but you would not learn that in school…

If you haven’t been watching HBO’s John Adams miniseries about the sophisticated work and courage of the founding fathers, I highly recommend it. It too is a teachable moment.

Great post about a great speech. I particularly liked Mr. Obama’s reference to all the nonsense in the media as distractions that week need to get past in order to move on to the business at hand. That seemed very “teacherish”. Your assessment of him as a teacher was right on. Gary Stagers comment and links to the articles about the young men who are his speech writers really reflect Obama’s respect for young people. His reliance on these kids who are just a few years out of college says a great deal about how relevant he is to educators.

I have enjoyed seeing people’s reactions to the speech. I understand very deeply what Obama was saying about what people feel even if it is gut and wrong. The other day I was at a mall and in the parking lot I was approached by two young African American men to know where the YMCA was. My gut lurched with fear…and I quickly reacted “no I don’t know…” moved quickly on my way. As the two young men went by I realized they were high school boys with backpacks who really wanted to know where the Y was. I yelled back… hey…I am pretty sure it’s over there on the other side of the road…they smiled brightly back “thanks”. I was so ashamed of how I felt. I think it is so easy to believe that all of one category of people are bad or will mug you or what every news & TV show bad things to make you feel uneasy. It was wrong and I need to work on that. I know I am not prejudiced and I wasn’t raised that way. But that is why Obama’s comments touched me. He was real about life and the way it is in average America. I am not a bad person or a bad teacher. But I need to be better at working with my students to accept everyone as the people they are and not by a preconcieved notion of what they might be.

Thanks for sharing that, Sue. Speaks for many of us, myself included. I was struck by the line that the most segregated hour in our lives is Sunday morning at 11 am. We have so little context for our differences because so many of us don’t experience those differences on a daily basis. We all need to get better at understanding those things we don’t know well.

Gary, I still see evidence of critical thinking and deep thoughts in the content. the expression is the speechwriter’s arena, but I still feel that the thoughts are there.

You are right, though, that we do need to go below the surface of what everyone knows about race and gender relations. Only then will we get to a deep understanding of where we are and where we’re going. The only way to do this is by interaction…breaking bread and the like.

Thanks for a thoughtful post, although at the end you undercut your point a bit with a swipe at the current president.

If that comment about shopping was the only thing you’ve heard in six years of public discourse about the war, it’s a reminder that for learning to occur, you don’t just need a good teacher, you need willing students. And students don’t have to agree with everything the teacher teaches, but they do have to listen.

There are all kinds of prejudices we have to be prepared to give up to move forward as a nation. One of them is deciding that those we disagree with are not worth listening or talking to.

Thanks for the comment, Roger. It’s a valid point. Let me just emphasize that in that “teachable moment,” one in which I was very ready to listen and to be lead, begging for it almost, I think the opportunity was wasted. Certainly, I’ve learned a great deal in the six years hence.

Wasted in the sense of not being effective or persuasive? Do you think there was just too much that conflicted with strongly held beliefs?

Part of the effectiveness of the fireside chats, I expect, was because they were not followed by an instant rebuttal explaining that everything the president had just said was wrong, wrong, WRONG! Today, the possibilities for rebuttal are endless.

How can the next president get people to change (or even question) their beliefs, given the constant re-enforcement possible for all sides in every debate in today’s world?

I think effective. And that last question gets to the heart of the matter right now, I think. Doesn’t matter what you think or believe, there is always a supportive community to nurture you. That, obviously can be good or bad. But I’m thinking we do have to get beyond that if things are going to get unstuck in this country.

I never saw Obama as such (a teacher), until you mentioned it. Many qualities in which I see in him, I see in many great teachers. The ability to motivate is crucial in both professions. It’s about time someone is talking about real change. Thanks for the post.

I’m sorry but we don’t need a teacher as president. We need a leader. Teachers are for classrooms, leaders are for presidencies. Someone can be very well spoken and eloquent but fail to make the right decision when it comes crunch time. Obama just has no history of leading a group of people. He has no history of making decisions on issues that matter. In his speeches that, I admit, are very eloquent, he remains vague about any issue that may cause him to lose votes. “hope” and “change” are the most vague terms to use in a presidency. Of course people want hope and change. He says this becuase he knows most of the country will agree with him on this point and then mindlessly follow him on whatever he decides as being the “hope” and “change” our country needs. Instead of writing eloquent speeches, he needs to get off the fence and start spending his time researching and deciding what will make our country better. Last time I checked, a speech is just words. Show me some action.

It’s a shame that many Americans share your point of view. Instead of looking at what our Country needs to become One Nation, you tend to think about what is important for you. This is unbelievably UnAmerican.

I’m a registered Independent, and Obama has my vote. I’ll let you figure out the parallels between Teachers and Leaders on your own.

Will,
I agree with your analysis of Barack’s speech the other day. What appealed to me is that he presented the complexity of the issue and did not take one side. I believe our nation has become so polarized. Issues have been black and white for too long: you are either pro-choice or pro-life, you are for gun control or against it, you are either “with us or against us”. It is time that we realize the complexities of these issues and we search for common ground as citizens concerned about our nation and not talking points to justify the “side” we have selected to support. It is that, the common ground, that I feel Barack Oboma truly is searching for. I think that is a great characteristic to have in a President and a role model for our young generation.

question who would vote for someone who never attended college,never joined a church,served eight years in state government and two years in congress? I wonder if the 16th president of the u.s. asked himself that question?

I know my posting of my opinions on this “left” page was not going to be taken well. However, the fact that I care about Obama not taking a side on important issues is proof that the issues DO matter to me. And please don’t feel sorry for me and people like me for having an opinion that may be different from yours. Thats is the beauty of our country; The fact that we can have different opinions and still live and work together is what makes this country what it is. I appreciate and respect your opinion, a. woody, but would also appreciate it if you would respect mine as well.

To expand on the teacher/leader issue: If teachers were the epitome of leaders, (and some of them I admit are great leaders aside from their teaching) then there wouldn’t be administrative personel at schools because the school would be led well by the teaching staff. Just a thought.